


Sunday Tea on Mars

by Muccamukk



Category: Babylon 5
Genre: Feelings, Hugs, Mention of pregnancy, Multi, POV Multiple, Post-Series, Pre-Poly, Sort Of, Valen Returns
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-25
Updated: 2017-09-25
Packaged: 2018-12-24 22:00:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,806
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12021879
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Muccamukk/pseuds/Muccamukk
Summary: Lise knows she's been with Michael too long when a presumed-dead Minbari prophet at the breakfast table is the least of her worries.





	Sunday Tea on Mars

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TwoMenAndAGuava (drakkynfyre47)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/drakkynfyre47/gifts).



Michael worked hard, played hard, and did his level best to be there for Lise and the bun in the oven too, but he had one inviolate rule under their roof: Sunday mornings, he got to sleep in until nine. Lise didn't mind; she said she enjoyed having the kitchen to herself, without Michael in her hair; four years in, he was used to getting up to find her elbow deep in financial reports and research proposals. He was not used to getting up and finding her having tea with a ghost.

"Catherine?" he said, stopping dead in his tracks, robe still half tide.

"Hello, Michael." It was Catherine, too, a little older and greyer like the rest of them—hair buzzed off, and wearing the sort of deliberately-nondescript civvies that made it so easy to pick out undercover Rangers—but unmistakable.

He hadn't seen her since he'd gotten her that passport to Minbar to go find Jeff. Jeff who had said she'd been killed in the Shadow War a year before he himself had vanished.

"What the hell?" he demanded, because the real question was too inconceivable to even think. "Where did you come from?"

"Catherine is looking for somewhere to stay," Lise said, peering over the rim of her mug. She narrowed her eyes slightly, indicating that she'd already decided what was going to happen and that Michael had damn well better back her up.

"Okay," Michael said, falling in line. "How long are you on Mars?"

Catherine and Lise exchanged glances. They'd talked about that too. "Just until we get our bearings, sort out some paperwork." Michael's heart jumped at the word _our_ but he still couldn't let himself imagine the question, not until Catherine said, " _Someone_ reported me dead, and that _someone_ is going to help me get my pilot's license reinstated." Her eyes slide sideways at that, towards the spare bedroom.

Michael followed her gaze, just in time for a figure to step out into the light of the kitchen. The man was tall and Minbari and undeniable.

"Jesus, Jeff," Michael breathed. John had told him—and Susan, and Delenn, and Marcus—but he hadn't believed it, not really, until this moment. "Or it's Valen now, isn't it?"

* * *

Catherine watched Jeff's face as he watched Michael's—both their expressions searching for something, some sign that they'd find welcome. Decades as the leader of a warrior cult had perfected Jeff's mask, and Michael's professional business tycoon poker face wasn't bad either, but Catherine could see through them both. The confession lay in Jeff's stillness before he took a breath and said, "I'm currently between names." So strange to hear him speaking English again, indeed to speak it herself. She'd almost forgotten how until the words came flooding back. They were both out of place, their lives up ended yet again, but at least this time she had green tea and human voices.

"Are you?" Michael asked, his voice hard, but out of the corner of her eye, Catherine saw him hide his hands in the pockets of his robe. Were they shaking?

"Dammit, Socks," Jeff blurted, and Michael laughed, an involuntary sound, like a sneeze, and then they were in each others' arms, Michael's hand coming up to cup the back of Jeff's neck below the crest, both Jeff's arms wrapped so tightly around Michael's ribs that Catherine was amazed he could breath.

"Told you," Lise said, and the hardness in her voice made Catherine turn to her. Lise sat tall, self composed, and braced for disaster. "Those two could never say 'no' to each other." She'd barely lowered her voice, but the men didn't appear to hear her. "Next thing, they'll be sailing off, getting themselves killed."

Catherine didn't have any plans to, but then again when had Jeff ever planned on anything that happened to him? Jeff's life happened to spite his plans. "Well," she said, after considering it, "I, for one, plan to go get myself killed with him."

It was strange how much Lise's laugh was like Michael's, sudden and involuntary, but heartfelt. It felt so good to hear humans laughing, to sit across from this beautiful woman as though it were normal. "I've never tried that," she said.

"So far, it's the only thing I've found that works," Catherine replied.

* * *

Jeff had to pull himself away from Michael. He'd wanted this so deep in his soul that until he felt the warmth in his heart and the giddiness running through every nerve, he hadn't let himself admit it. He kissed Michael as he drew back, a peck on the lips that he let his oldest friend take as he would.

He glanced over his shoulder to the women sitting at the breakfast table, heads bent as the talked together. It had taken ten years for Catherine to show up, almost too late for the war, but it evened their ages out a bit, at least in Minbari terms. She looked comfortable here, more perhaps than she ever had in the command centre of a Minbari warship. She'd always been a warrior there, and never quite stopped hating it.

"I'm still mad as hell that you left me," Michael was telling him, though his hand hadn't left Jeff's neck.

Jeff nodded automatically, but looking at Lise settled at the kitchen table, her belly just starting to fill, he didn't believe that Michael meant it. "Going back would have killed you," he said simply. "But listen, Michael," he added, "I missed you every day, every hour."

Michael took a breath and held it for a moment, preparing for a confession, but then he blinked and patted the side of Jeff's face before stepping back. "Yeah, me too," he said, and Jeff wondered what he'd meant to admit. He suspected it was something darker, and wondered how long it would take to worm the truth out of him. He still had very little idea of what had happened while he'd been gone.

"We'll need to stay a bit," Jeff said, knowing he was grinning like a fool, "Just to catch up."

"Then we'll need to find some papers for you," Lise put in from the table. Jeff looked at her again, wondering not for the first time since she'd answered the door an hour ago, how she felt about him. She'd been nothing but polite to the two refugees who washed up on her doorstep early on a Sunday morning.

"We have Minbari papers," Jeff said, "The Rangers arranged them for us before they dropped us off." Dumped them off more like. Whatever political situation Delenn was juggling, it clearly didn't have room for a prophet reborn.

Michael was frowning again, and Jeff wondered if it was because he'd gone to the Rangers before he'd found Michael, or if he was just thinking. He couldn't read him as well as he'd been able to once. "You won't get far with those, depending what you want," Michael said. "I can get you Mars papers, sure, but Earth Alliance isn't Minbar's biggest fan, not ever, but especially since Sheridan's little flyover Geneva four years ago."

"What?" Jeff said. The Ranger briefing really had been brief, it seemed.

"I'll fill you in," Lise said, making Michael turn sharply. "Darling, don't you have forgers to visit?"

* * *

It took Michael twenty minutes to pull himself together, down three coffees, collect Catherine and head out the door. Lise held her place at the kitchen table and waited him out. When the door to Garibaldi-Hampton private hanger finally hissed shut, Lise was still sitting at the breakfast table, hands wrapped around a mug of imported herbal tea, watching Sinclair with a level gaze. She could see how Michael had been able to instantly recognise him, especially his eyes

"We didn't intend to disturb your home," he said in that sandpaper baritone that had always pulled Michael's attention like a magnet.

"No?" Lise asked, meeting his brown eyes and refusing to be drawn in by their kindness. "Disturbance just follows you like a puppy?"

A half smile. "I suppose it does."

Lise rested a hand on her stomach and wondered what would happen to all the plans she'd made for this baby girl inside her, for Edgers Industries, for as much peace as Mars could give. "I used to resent the hell out of you," she told him. "For luring Michael away, for being someone Michael loved more, for going off and dying gloriously like you always wanted, so that I couldn't even win."

"I know," Jeff said, but didn't try to explain. Neither he nor that beautiful warrior woman of his had said how or why they were back from the dead, not that Lise cared. Miracles seemed to happen every month around Michael, or they had since he'd met Jeff.

She sighed. "But that was three marriages and three wars ago, for me at least." And a baby she'd never seen again, and this new one now. "I'm a businesswoman. I'd rather negotiate than fight; it's less expensive."

"It's good to be back on Mars," Jeff said, and she understood what he meant: to be back where the sky was the correct colour, the air tasted right, and people talked about the things one understood to the bone. His lips had quirked, but she could see the hesitation in his eyes. "What's your opening bid?"

"You both stay two weeks; we talk, get to know each other; you don't convince Michael to sell his share of the company and move to the Rim to fight nebula vampires, at least not before then."

That was the first time she'd ever made him blink. She wondered how long that had been true for anyone, though she figured Catherine could still give the man a run for his money. "That's it?" he asked.

"For now," she said. "Trial period, subject to renegotiation in two weeks' time." She held out her hand, and he stared at it for half a second, as though he'd forgotten what the gesture meant. Then they shook on it, his hand large and too strong to be human, but gentle. The memory of how it'd felt to lose Michael to this man flooded over her, the worst part was that she'd always been able to see why Michael had gone, not just the fresh start, the good job, but a voice she wouldn't have been able to say no to either, if he'd asked for anything, if he'd noticed her at all.

"Thank you," he said, and his eyes crinkled as he smiled at her, making him look more like the old Jeff, the Marsie made good. He caught her look and laughed, the first time she'd heard him sounding happy, not just in ten years, but ever.

Stranger still, Lise found herself smiling back.


End file.
